Maleisië en Indonesië

	Saturday/Sunday 29 and 30 September: due to the European racketlon tournaments, Kirsten knows Schiphol almost by heart and knew exactly where she wanted to have diner. A cunning plan that failed miserably because we were in the intercontinental terminal. Travelling to Asia started now with a nice Asian restaurant in this terminal. The booking agency forgot to tell uss that KLM started to charge money for two seats together, so we counted us lucky that the cabin staff found us a spot in a packed airplane. Twelve hours later we landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With our rental car we passed lots of palm tree plantages, for palm oil, heading for the coast. Here we had a resort on stilts in the water, in the form of a palm tree. The place was well kept, had 5 restaurants and a friendly staff. Most of it’s clientele comes from Kuala Lumpur, so in the mid-week the place wasn’t crowded. Monday/Tuesday first and second of October: a green bean (sperzieboon) is a blazing pepper from hell until proven otherwise. Reading days, quietly getting used to the climate and recovering from our jet-lag (6 hours), which was challenged by thunder in the nights and mosques... Foto: Petronas Towers te Kuala Lumpur
Wednesday third of October: in our Proton rental car we drove to Kuala Lumpur. Our hotel was 1.6km north of the Petronas Towers. In and around these towers 11.000 people work. The other quad zillion was there like us. We started with the historical part of town: the Indian Neighbourhood and Chinatown. In 1857 Kuala Lumpur was founded in this Chinatown, at the fork of two rivers and was named after its surroundings. Kuala Lumpur meaning something like ‘mudding swamp’. We saw several temples and lot’s of little shops -including lots of “hoofddoekjes” shops. In the afternoon we visited the modern part of town, starting with a strip of 50 by 500 meters of ‘untouched’ rainforest. We went on towards the Petronas Towers and killed some time in the huge mall in the first six floors of this building. The Petronas Towers are 452 meters high, were finished in 1996, and are connected to each other by a skybridge at the height of 170m. The basement has an aquarium with big turtles, manta’s and sharks. More interestingly there are 12 colored stylized elephant statues at the exit towards the park. And to top it all the bar next door serves Delerium Tremens. The main pond has a nice series of illuminated servo controlled fountains, and when night comes they switch on and play :-). Dazzled by all that, we tried to get home. After some attempts we found our subway line and exit. Our day ended with a 20-layers pancake-chocolate pie and (some would suggest too much) rum and (a whee bit of) “43” in the hotel room. Foto: orang oetan opvangpark
Masjid Ubudia	Thursday fourth of October: Kuala Lumpur street advertisement states that it takes a modest income of ~€700 monthly to rent a budget friendly 80m2 residence. Our travelguide puts the average income in Malaysia at ~€1000 a month, so yes the country seems well developed. Today we drove North and visited Ipoh to see some of its rock-temples (temples inside a rock of course). The first was at the south side of the city, and turned out to be a series of four. The oldest is the Sam Po Tong temple (temple of the threefould Juwel) which lead through the hill towards a hidden valley, where they put among others a turtle pond. Turtles symbolize long life and each temple we visited either had turtle ponds or a sign saying please not to put turtles in the water. Normally the Buddhist temples have portraits from some intermediate stage of the dude’s trip to enlightenment, but this temple also seemed to has 2 sets of 5 images possibly to help you imagine what happens if you stray from the path. One for example shows a man first beheaded, then cut in two, then burned. Maybe they were still looking for the right place to put these. In front of the temple a nice Chinese garden full of flowers and artificial little mountains with some displays made of little puppets and accessories. We figured out how to get a parking ticket in the center of Ipoh and had lunch. Next we drove to the north side to visit the Perak Tong temple, build in 1926 by the Chinese monk Chong Sen Yee. Through the narrow entrance, the cave opens up and we see a 12 meter high Boeddha statue in lotus position. The walls around it are painted in similar tones and show related historic fiction. Further into the cave, more Buddhas and Shivas and things with arm-count in-between. For some reason the wall paintings here are all of pretty young girls in traditional robes. I guess they were remodeling. Winding through and up the cave, we climb the 384 steps, the symbolism of this number pressing heavy on us. We exit the cave and wind up at the top of the hill. A thrilling view in ages past, now a 360 degrees vista of tin industry.
Our next stop was the beautiful white/golden Masjid Ubudia, a mosque build in 1913 in between high palms. The quiet city lies next to a wide river and used to be an administrative center in colonial times. We drove to the next stop, where we had a lakeside hotel. Turned out it was in the lake and on poles again. Using all the furniture that would move, we made a lovely little dining spot on our balcony and ordered food through room service (first time ever – it was good). However when the food arrived just after sunset, little flying insects had conquered our balcony. So we quickly withdrew and ate inside. Friday October 5th: Short summary: 100 Oran Utan photos + 100 Penang temple photos. A short distance from the hotel lobby, we found the boat to the Oran Utan island reserve a few kilometers off-shore. We had rowing lanes next to us. On the way we watched people rowing fiercely back to the beach towards a cheering crowd as they tried to win the Lakeside Varsity. The island had research accommodations and medical facilities. Visitors were led through a fenced monkey-proof corridor to watch the apes. The local supreme leader, a cubic meter of muscle, lay motionless up in a tree. The others were more motivated and we were introduced to apes of each age group, the younger of which were being prepared for release back in the wild on Borneo. The rest was here to stay, be studied and do tricks for food. No doubt you are dying to here that Oran Utan menstruation cycles are the same as human (every month, 3-4 days), and that pregnancy duration is a bit less than 9 months, and that a baby weight is roughly1.5kg. The apes are frequently tested for malaria, diabetes, thyroid diseases and more. An incubator for newborns was present, as well as diapers. Foto: Georgetown
Zeeslang!	We continued our way to Georgetown, a city on an island in the north, connected to mainland by way of two bridges. The chaotic traffic on the bridge was just a prelude to the terrible traffic on the island itself. It affected Bas’ mood. Quiz: “What do you do when the car before you brakes? A) pass on the left, B) pass on the right”. Even an ambulance with siren on was only given space by some. With the aid of our maps.me app we found a hotel: the first two hotels didn’t exist anymore. Possibly there is a better map app for Asia. We found a hotel that had not transformed into an apartment complex. We liked the seaview, palms, beach and pool, so we stayed. Next we went to see the biggest Buddhist temple complex of Malaysia: Kek Lok Si temple. The building of this complex started in 1890 and it is still expanding. A ~60m Buddha statue within an ~100m open pagoda is being finalized. There is more mountain behind it, so no doubt they’ll continue. Islam came to Malaysia and Indonesia early, say 1300-1500, but apart from the obvious outward sign of women wearing headdresses, it does not seem to make them act more modestly. According to our guidebook there are several versions of Islam here, and the one that blends with local folklore and myths is the most popular one here. Also noticed in Buddhist temples that women wearing scarfs would not pass by an opening facing a Buddha without greeting it, so things seem indeed blended.
Saturday 6th October: today we went to the Penang National Park in the north west of the Penang Island. Here we did a very nice hike through the jungle and the first indigenous species that we saw was a sea worm of perhaps 2m, swimming in the shallow water. We also saw some monkeys, a scrawny cat walking along with each hiker and a lost turtle. We had diner at a little seaside restaurant, where Kirsten had the local ‘Laksa’. She will not order it again. By contrast, the local baked banana with cheese, chocolate and some sort of sirop was a very nice treat. On the way back to Georgetown we visited two temples followed by some very well preserved clan houses in the old city. Lot’s of riches, ornaments and detail. The local Indian market has lots of very colorful thin fabrics, as well as some curry yellow fabrics. Extremely nice but quite useless to buy, because Kirsten isn’t ever going to wear it (except from some curry yellow more modern dresses she found by accident). Did we already mention that ‘curry’ is making Bas very happy this holiday? Especially the red ones. Back in the hotel the restaurant had a buffet diner with lot’s of desserts! Foto: rijstvelden

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